More Details

Here's the menu (there will be a selection of Hors D'Oeuvres as well):

Fresh Fruit Cup with Sherbet

Iceburg lettuce wedge with bacon, bleu cheese, tomato confetti, and balsamic vinaigrette

Baked stuffed haddock with seafood stuffing and lobster sauce

Sole Florentine with spinach and seafood stuffing

Stuffed breast of chicken with supreme sauce

Bow tie pasta with shrimp, tomato, basil, and mozzarella cheese

Roast prime ribs of beef au jus and horseradish cream

Seasonal vegetable

Rice pilaf

Herb roasted potatoes

The menu is subject to change, but this should be close. We chose something with a lot of variety so there would be something for everyone.

Unfortunately, I can't get the dress I ordered. That's the danger of having a small outfit make a dress. If just one seamstress quits, all bets are off. After a close call of becoming a panic stricken bride, I was able to find another one. First (and I'm sure it won't be the last) disaster averted.

Rick has ordered his special wedding shoes and has chosen a wedding band. Now he just has to decide what he's going to wear. He's looking to match our wedding colors, but is steering clear of the whole tuxedo thing. I'm sure whatever he chooses, he'll be a very handsome groom.

We still have to find a DJ and photographer. I also need to find a place close to Hampton Beach that can do wedding hair and makeup. If anyone has any recommendations, please let us know.

Favors, Menus, and Playlist. Oh My!

It's a busy wedding week for us. I'm working on favors and centerpieces and Rick is working on the invitations. We're both trying hard to come up with songs for our playlist, making final decisions on the reception menu, and choosing our rings. All of these little details put the pressure on and I am approaching panic mode. Thankfully Rick is the calm to my frantic. As usual, we make a great team. My advice to anybody planning a wedding is to approach the tremendous task at hand as a TEAM. Seriously, it's a sanity saver.

Rick and I just took a nice break from all of this over Memorial Day weekend. We spent a day in Boston shopping. Rick thought that a relaxing weekend being pampered at a hotel would do us both some good. He surprised me with making reservations for us to have a river view room at the Hotel Marlowe. We had a fabulous time.

Last call for those that would like to suggest songs for the playlist! Watch those mailboxes, we'll be sending the invitations out this week

Piece of Cake

After a few months with no real progress on our wedding plans, we have become productive once again. This past weekend, we were lucky enough to have picked an incredible bakery at which to schedule a cake-tasting and consultation, Frederick's Pastries in Amherst NH.



Having long known of the buzz and local prestige of the establishment, I was nervous that our meeting would result in disappointment-- a cake we couldn't afford, unreasonable terms, whatever. I simply assumed that although we were aiming high, we would eventually decide that we had to settle for a second-rate cake from a second-rate bakery.



However, our meeting went smoothly, quickly, and successfully. Our original idea of a two-tiered cake was thrown out the window, along with a few other details that we had envisioned, but for good reason: These guys are the best at what they do, and they know what they're talking about. Every suggestion made perfect sense to us.

The end result was our choice of a cake in the "Innocence" design (see picture), using blue frosting with brown ribbon.



Here's an example of an "Innocence" cake that Frederick's lists in their gallery.
It fit right in with our vision of smooth, relatively unfettered simplicity.



Our cake will also feature a decorative smattering of white chocolate seashells, and blue chocolate lobsters, with crushed graham cracker "sand" sprinkled along the cakeboard and the topper. Andy had the brilliant idea of adding some blue seaglass to the decoration, which Frederick's assured us would be no problem at all.

The tasting went incredibly well too. Although we were originally set on red velvet, we tasted their chocolate, golden vanilla, and almond cakes, with a variety of fruit and nut fillings. Our final decision was that each tier (starting with our anniversary top tier) will alternate between vanilla with strawberry filling, and chocolate with raspberry filling.

I am very excited and pleased at how well things went, and the price turned out to be considerably less than we had budgeted for. As you will notice, we were so taken with this bakery, Andy added Frederick's to our links list here at the blog.

I'm no big connoisseur of cakes or desserts, but this bakery and the whole experience just blew me away. Now I'm not sure I can wait 5 months to have dessert!

THE Dress

CANCELLED, , , ,

Not a setback I was preparded for, but the seamstress can't make my dress. So, I'm back to shopping for another one. I can just feel my bloodpressure rising. I was able to get the shoes and I am picky about shoes so that is a positive.

And THE shoes. . . .

Champagne swatch.

Bye bye. . .

Wedding Salute to Regretsy.com Part 5

Once again taking "til death do us part" too seriously. This is a ring bearer's box.

Elton John would be proud of any bride brave enough to wear these.

A bat groom that defies explanation. Unless you're Batman this shouldn't be part of your wedding decor.

Wedding Salute to Regretsy.com Part 4

Paint can champagne chiller. Really?


Here comes the. . .oh my god!

Another offering from the bizarre cake topper category. A twinkie and a bear? How is that supposed to work?

Bacon heart sculpture. Another item that you will not find on our registry. Rick would just eat it anyway (if The Boys didn't get to it first). Mmmm, bacony goodness.

Wedding Salute to Regretsy.com Part 3

Even without the paint splatter this is one ugly wedding dress. Who would BUY this? And pay for the artsy ummm. . . paint job? I could buy a thrift store dress and enlist the help of local pre-schoolers if I wanted artsy. Pass.

I just find these weird. The seller suggested this as a wedding gift or cake topper. Yummy. . .yarn in the cake. Plus, these are kind of creepy.

And speaking of creepy. . .Ken and Barbie looking as if they are drowning or their heads are being boiled in a pot is just not my idea of a charming necklace.

Happy New Year!

Wow, a new year already. When I think back on the last 2½ years, I both enjoy it and don't. I enjoy the feeling that every minute Andy and I spend together seems to become an adventure. I don't enjoy the feeling that 2½ years seems to have gone by in an instant, but I know I'm not alone in feeling like time goes faster and faster with every passing year.

This past weekend served as both our first Christmas and our first New Year's together, and it was as much an adventure as any other visit. I flew to the DC area on New Year's Eve, and we spent the weekend relaxing at the Westin on a sort of mini winter vacation. We exchanged gifts, and I was very pleased (but not surprised) at how thoughtful and practical Andy's gifts to me were. I got some great video games, some really nice shaving accessories, and a few lobster-related items, among other things.


I think this print is my favorite of Andy's gifts this year.

Our New Year's celebration was pretty tame. We had a few drinks at the bar, and were delighted to see that a familiar face was working that night: The bartender who had concocted Andy's challenge of a Caramel Martini during our last visit to the Westin. She (the bartender) informed us this time around that the Caramel Martini was a huge success at the bar, and was now the hotel's "signature drink".

During our stay, we got some minor shopping and major eating accomplished too. We also had a series of our typically excellent conversations concerning our fascination with the human condition, and the endangered species known as "etiquette", having made many first-hand observations of rudeness that was so blatant as to be completely inexplicable.

2010 was a great year, but 2011 promises to be even better. Now that the holidays are over and the year is off to a wonderful start with the wedding less than 9 months away, Andy and I have made our own joint resolution to get back to work researching vendors and ironing out the details of our reception.

Happy New Year to all of you, from myself, Andy, Ducky, Spooky, and Oscar!

Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays! Rick is spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with his parents in New Hampshire. I am spending Christmas Eve at home relaxing with Oscar and Ducky. I will be spending Christmas Day with my Dads in DC. Rick will be here for the New Year and that will be our "Christmas". What are you all doing for the holidays?

I don't know about New England, but we narrowly escaped a white Christmas here in the DC area. Anybody out there enjoying a white Christmas?

We're looking forward to 2011 and the wedding countdown. We seriously need to get back on track with planning. Anyway. . . .Merry Christmas!

Deck The Malls

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and survived Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Who comes up with this stuff? Oh yeah, marketing guys (I'm looking at you, Rick).

Rick and I had a lovely Thanksgiving with his family. Bonus! Bevin and Renee were in town and we got to spend some time with them.

We even braved Black Friday to do some Christmas shopping. Despite the insanity, the lines, and the absolute terrifying nature of the local Leominster mall, we had fun and got most of our shopping done. We ended the day by wrapping presents together and Rick made a scrumptious lobster pot pie.

As Rick has mentioned before, we make a great team. We are both naturally creative and effecient. Two great things to have in common when trying to plan a wedding, but equally as useful when it comes to the difficulty of holiday shopping. We got so much more accomplished as a team than we would have on our own.

And. . .drum roll please. . .the stabby beard is gone. I'm sure my sigh of relief was heard worldwide.


As I mentioned in my last post, Rick will be down here this weekend. We have more shopping to do and we are looking forward to taking Ducky and Oscar to see the Bull Run Festival of Lights.

We will also be spending some time with my Dads. I don't know what the plan is yet, but I do know that The Village is being built as I type. The Village is my Dads collection of Dickens Village pieces all lovingly built into a truly beautiful Dickensian scene of Christmas bliss. I can't wait to see it!





We've unintentionally taken a short break from wedding planning to enjoy the holidays. Thankfully, a lot is already done thanks to the one stop nature of having a hotel wedding. We do plan to get our save the date cards out in January, so if you have not provided your address yet, please do so ASAP.

I don't know about everyone else, but the seemingly endless office parties kind of stress me out. Of course, my office is huge and divided into several sub-offices if you will. I can't cook and I can't bake and if I contributed money for all of them I'd go broke in a week. Thank heavens for all these food celebrities! I was watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade while we were getting ready and lo and behold all my office party woes were solved. I can't possibly ruin Turkey Cranberry Pinwheels and they look so festive. The recipe is here:

http://www.pillsbury.com/recipes/turkey-cranberry-pinwheels/2760AEB1-498D-4AF0-93EA-985E55EEB42D?WT.mc_id=paid_search_200200_636117&WT.srch=1&esrc=11183

We wish everyone a happy and joy-filled holiday season!